


settle down (with me)

by thegirl



Series: Abandoned and Adoptable [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gang Rape, Gen, Murder, Oneshot Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-07-14 02:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7148558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirl/pseuds/thegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a Westeros where humans carry their souls outside their bodies, the settling of one's daemon is seen to be the proof of growing up, more surely than bedding one's first whore or having a first moon blood. </p><p>Settling happens for many reasons, and sometimes for none at all. But in a world where people go through so much so young, that's rather unlikely, isn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimly, as if from far away, she heard a... a noise... a soft sighing sound, as if a million people had let out their breath at once. She struggled to turn as the old man’s fingers grew lax, and couldn’t see her father anymore, or her sister, or anyone. Everyone was roaring, and all there was was the blue sky and a flock of pigeons that flew above, not knowing anything of what was going on below.
> 
> Lennal settled on her shoulder, talons sinking into her shoulder even as she was heaved through the crowd. A rock settled in her stomach, and she knew.

Arya’s tears blinded her as she struggled through the crowd to her father, even as the King’s Justice lifted her father’s own sword above his neck. At her side Lennal clawed and hissed in the form of a small arctic fox, but he was as powerless as she was among the crush of people. Around her arm, a hand closed like a trap and pulled her back, off her feet, as if she was a little doll.

“Don’t look!” A thick voice snarled before her face was pressed to the strangers. Lennal clawed and bit at his heels, shifting faster and faster than he ever had before, faster than either he or Arya knew he could, from fox to wolf to hawk to lizard, battling with the man’s small ferret daemon that smelt foul as the man himself.

“I... I... I...” Arya sobbed.

The old man shook her hard, and caught Lennal so hard with the side of his foot that her daemon was cast away for a moment. Something in Arya’s chest stretched. “Shut your mouth and close your eyes, boy.”

Dimly, as if from far away, she heard a... a noise... a soft sighing sound, as if a million people had let out their breath at once. She struggled to turn as the old man’s fingers grew lax, and couldn’t see her father anymore, or her sister, or anyone. Everyone was roaring, and all there was was the blue sky and a flock of pigeons that flew above, not knowing anything of what was going on below.

Lennal settled on her shoulder, talons sinking into her shoulder even as she was heaved through the crowd. A rock settled in her stomach, and she knew.

Yoren – the night’s watchman, she remembers now – pulls her into an alley. She is still sobbing and he lets go of her to allow her to breathe and calm. Smooth, waxy feathers and a small beak stroke against her cheek.

“A pigeon,” he grunts, and Arya turns her head and sees the assessment is correct. Lennal has been many things, but he has never assumed this shape before – he has always been something rare before, something that stands out and pulls attention to himself with otherness. But a pigeon – he is pretty, in a common kind of way, and Arya can’t help the disappointment she feels at his final shape. “It’s good, boy,” Yoren tells her, as his own ferret slinks into his dark hood, “easy to hide. He’ll save your life, no doubt. Now, stand still.”

And before Arya knew it, his hand was hard on her scalp and cutting away her hair in great chunks. Lennal cooed in her ear with comforts, and Arya cuddled him close to her chest, not daring to let go.


	2. Tyrion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Renata, sensing his hatred for her form, had become ashamed of herself. He had never forgiven himself for that. _I’m sorry,_ she’d say, _this is who we are._

Tyrion tries to forget how Renata finally settled.

Because forgetting is easy- well, no, forgetting is _easier_ than remembering. Nothing has been easy since the day his two-week wife was forced to her knees to service guard after guard, servant after servant, before finally she came to him and his father threw a golden coin in her palms. Her eyes had been brown and large and beautiful, and Tyrion had closed his own so he didn’t have to look at her.

 _She’s a lying whore,_ he had told himself, but that didn’t make him feel any better, in fact it just intensified the pain, _you were just too stupid to see it._

Tysha’s daemon had been a hare, a small brown thing with quivering whiskers. He had been gentle with Renata as Tysha had been gentle with him, in the beginning.

Honestly, Tyrion doesn’t remember the moment Renata changed for the last time. But when Tysha was gone, hands overflowing with silver coins and one gold, her face bloody and slick with tears, and her hare with her, Tyrion had turned to see Renata in the guise of a skinny, hungry beast with large eyes.

“A scavenger,” his father had said a few days later when it became clear to all that she wasn’t going to shift again, “useless. Having to take the scraps of stronger animals.”

That hurt. But, in those dark days, Tyrion’s entire world had been one of hurt.

She had become a hyena, Tyrion realized in the end after scouring the library for more information. A cackling, cruel beast that feasted on the young of others, a scourge to the lands of lions.

“How fitting,” he had said to himself, before pouring another drink. Renata, sensing his hatred for her form, had become ashamed of herself. He had never forgiven himself for that. _I’m sorry,_ she’d say, _this is who we are._

_This is who we are._

Tyrion had been called a monster all his life. But until the crofter’s daughter, until her bloody fists full of silver, he had never felt like one.

And now he knows that is all he will ever be.


	3. Sansa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Petyr misjudges the moment, and the depth of her affection for her rescuer. That is his downfall. He misjudges the day, the hour, the minute, misjudges the look in Sansa’s eyes as one of desire, not curiosity, and he misjudges his sway over her.
> 
> Kisses were one thing. Sitting on his lap was one thing. Allowing him to card a hand through her hair was one thing. Quiet whispers were one thing.
> 
> But he reaches out, his thin fingers covered in their thin rings, goes to touch Cloisom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I promised I'd do Jon this chapter, but I had this idea out of the blue and had to write it down ASAP. Plus, I'm still struggling with what Jon's daemon would be, however I'm leaning towards something cold-blooded.

Petyr misjudges the moment, and the depth of her affection for her rescuer. That is his downfall. He misjudges the day, the hour, the minute, misjudges the look in Sansa’s eyes as one of desire, not curiosity, and he misjudges his sway over her.

Kisses were one thing. Sitting on his lap was one thing. Allowing him to card a hand through her hair was one thing. Quiet whispers were one thing.

But he reaches out, his thin fingers covered in their thin rings, goes to _touch_ Cloisom.

It is beyond rude, beyond a social faux pas, even with the two of them in the room – Sansa can feel his cold, oily fingertips on her spine, in her bones, jabbing into her skull. A feeling of intense nausea overcomes her entire body, and Sansa feels as if her very essence has been dirtied.

Even Joffrey, even _Joffrey,_ had never touched her daemon.

She doesn’t even have time to scream, before Cloisom retaliates.

He had been an ermine before, which was one of his favourite shapes, as he could wind around Sansa’s neck like a living scarf. Being so close to one another was comfort. But his fur changes to scales, his small, sharp teeth transform into a forked tongue and he _bites_ at Petyr’s still outstretched fingers.

The Lord Protecter of the Vale curses, and steps back, his fingers showing deep punctures. He begins to wheeze, and shake. His right arm stills suddenly, and he stares at it in horror, before one of his legs gives away, quickly followed the by other. Only the left arm remains and he uses it to reach out to her, terror in his eyes – something she had never seen before. “Sansa,” he gasps, as his mockingbird pulls at his collar, as if trying to open his airway.

But alas, it is only a small creature. And whilst Sansa is a big creature, big enough to open the door to her chambers and call for help, big enough to try and treat the bite, big enough to do anything, anything at all, she just stands, and watches.

Soon, his final appendage stills, and he lays flat on the floor, body shuddering, eyes flickering this way and that. Sansa doesn’t know how long she waits there, waits, but finally his body falls still. His eyes stare vacantly up at the stone ceiling. Sansa breathes out.

Around her neck, Cloisom’s scales twist and he makes his way slowly down her arm. He is a pale grey in colour, but his eyes are like obsidian, and when he open his mouth to speak his tongue and mouth and fangs are all black as night.

 _“I will always protect you like this,”_ he promises in his new, hissing voice, and that is when it hits Sansa that he has finally settled.

He is not as beautiful as she had once fancied he would be, he doesn’t resemble Ser Loras’ peacock or Margaery’s tiny rainbow frog, or Robb’s red fox.

But now, Cloisom is more powerful than any of them, with his venomous fangs and black eyes. He winds his way up her arm again, and she feels him coil through her hair, like an elaborate comb. Sansa imagines that his white scales shall perfectly set off her dyed-dark hair, and imagines Randa’s jealousy.

As Sansa steps over Petyr’s still warm corpse, she smiles for the first time in what feels like years.


	4. Jon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon doesn’t know how young he was when he learned to make himself small and unnoticeable, how young he was when he learned to make himself disappear, because his very presence, his very existence was an insult to Lady Stark, a stain on Lord Stark’s honour, and a threat to his trueborn siblings. It is before he can remember, something he knows just was.
> 
> He knows he was younger when Adonia learned the same facts, and reacted by being as big, loud and attention seeking as possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longest installment yet! May have something to do with the fact Jon is my favourite, may have something to do with the fact that midway through writing I feel in love with Adonia.

Jon doesn’t know how young he was when he learned to make himself small and unnoticeable, how young he was when he learned to make himself disappear, because his very presence, his very _existence_ was an insult to Lady Stark, a stain on Lord Stark’s honour, and a threat to his trueborn siblings. It is before he can remember, something he knows just was.

He knows he was younger when Adonia learned the same facts, and reacted by being as big, loud and attention seeking as possible.

Adonia had always been a loud creature: she had favoured winged creatures for as long as Jon could remember, often becoming bright birds from the summer isles, squawking and chattering and shaking her blindingly colourful plumes around.

“Why do you always have to be the centre of attention?” Jon asked her, after she had spent the night time meal having a food fight with Arya and Lennal beneath the table that Jon had tried desperately to ignore, until he stood to find his breeches covered in gravy. “Can’t you just... be... less?”

“No,” Adonia said sharply, and nipped at his ear, “Somebody has to speak for you.”

“I speak for me,” Jon muttered as he went to change into his nightclothes.

“No you don’t,” Adonia chided, “if you did, I wouldn’t have to.”

Jon rolled his eyes, and like he had been doing for years, let her change into a small puppy before she clambered into bed. She liked being small at night: liked burrowing into the furs and nestling into the crook of Jon’s arm.

“One day,” she snuffled in his ear, “you’ll see I’m right.”

And whilst Adonia had always insisted that she knew everything, she didn’t know that day would come so soon. The next morning, in fact.

Jon woke to summer snows, and grinned at the fat white flakes sticking to the windowsill. He hurriedly pulled on his boots, still in his nightclothes. “You’ll catch a chill!” Adonia snapped, but shifted into a robin to perch on his shoulder as he ran to the practice yard.

Robb, predictably, was waiting already, Gala snapping at his heels in the form of a stub-tailed pup with grey fur. Robb was always awake before him, but the heir to Winterfell insisted that Gala always woke him, and not the other way around.

“I’m the Dragonknight!” Robb started off, signalling the start of their customary mad dash to the battlements.

“I’m Baelor the Blessed!” Jon yelled back.

“I’m Criston Cole!”

“I’m Daeron the Young Dragon!”

“I’m Robert Baratheon!” By then they had reached the top of the castle, and were hitting each other with their soft wooden swords, and it was Jon’s turn, and-

“I’m the Lord of Winterfell!” he hooted triumphantly as he touched the tip of his sword to Robb’s throat.

But Robb wasn’t playing anymore. Gala had gone very still at his side, her stub-tail no longer wagging joyfully as it had been minutes before. “No,” Robb said seriously, as Jon’s sword point drooped down to the ground, “you can’t be, you’re a Snow, not a Stark. My mother told me that you can never be Lord of Winterfell.”

Jon blinked once, twice. Without his realizing, his sword dropped from his hand.

“What’d you say that for?” Adonia snapped from his shoulder, and Robb coloured at her rebuke, but stood firm. At his side, Gala whimpered. All the other children’s daemons were a little in awe of Adonia, all but Lennal.

“I... I have to...” Jon said, tongue numb in his mouth. He all but sprinted down the castle’s stone steps, and didn’t stop running until he got back to his room. Only then did he let his lip quiver and his chin wobble and the first tear fall.

A warm, scaly snout blew hot air onto his cheek as he sobbed. “Shh,” Adonia spoke in a crackling voice, “no tears. It was just a game.”

But it wasn’t. They both knew it had stopped being a game the moment Robb brought his mother and Jon’s bastardy and the line of succession into what had been their special playtime. Jon wiped furiously at his eyes, and turned to look at Adonia, who rested on her haunches at the end of Jon’s unmade bed.

And she... she was like she had never been before.

“You’re a...” Jon said, mouth half hanging open, “you’re a dragon.”

“I know,” Adonia said, preening. She was, Jon thought, so gorgeous it burned. Her scales, from a distance, could be thought as simply white and grey, but up close... they were iridescent. Blue and green and silver, gold and pink and shining like every single one held a droplet of the sun. Her wingspan, Jon saw as she stretched out, was easily as big as half his room, but her head was around the same size as a dog’s, “I’m beautiful.”

“Yes,” Jon said honestly, swallowing as she beat her wings and made his hair blow against his face. “Are you... are you always going to... will you stay like this, do you think?”

Adonia stretched her neck, “Yes,” she said decisively, “I’m quite certain.”

“But you’re... you’re so _big.”_ Not big for a dragon, per se, Jon knew how big they could get and counted his lucky stars that she hadn’t grown to anywhere near the size of Balerion the Black Dread, Aegon the Conquerer’s daemon, who was said to have a skull the size of a carriage. But bigger than any of his siblings daemon’s, bigger than his father’s, bigger than any daemon Jon had ever seen, save that of Lord Yohn Royce, whose soul took the shape of a rhinoceros.

“I am, aren’t I?” Adonia said, well pleased. “Yes, I like this very much.”

Jon smiled at her obvious joy in her form, before his smile slipped off his face. “What will father say?”

Adonia cocked her head to the side and touched Jon’s cheek with her tail. “He will always love you, and me by extension. Plus,” she said, her eyes sparkling with mischevious fire, “I’m going to trounce Lennal tonight.”

And what, Jon wondered, could he do but laugh at that?


	5. Stannis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stannis finds her on the ground in the woods of Storm’s End, by chance, as she doesn’t make a sound. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flurry of movement, and investigated. She was well disguised against the brambles and autumn leaves, and by his side Kasimira coiled herself backwards, ready to pounce. Stannis held his hand aloft to stop her from attacking, and crept to see the source of the increasingly desperate flutters.
> 
> She was helpless – twisted, one wing bent back, but her eyes were terrified and intelligent. “Shh,” Stannis said to her without thinking, “peace bird. I am here to help you now.”
> 
> And he did. He took her back to the castle by cradling her in his arms, and suddenly he was glad Robert wasn’t there, as he surely would have laughed at the sight of his stern younger brother coddling the goshawk like it was a newborn babe. Kasimira looked at the animal with veiled concern, swishing her long tail back and forth as she padded by Stannis’ side, but said nothing – she hardly ever did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With Stannis, I was unsure about whether his daemon would have settled previously when his parent's ship sunk, but I decided I had to include Proudwing. Because Proudwing breaks my heart.
> 
> Original Stannis quote, from CoK: "When I was a lad I found an injured goshawk and nursed her back to health. Proudwing, I named her. She would perch on my shoulder and flutter from room to room after me and take food from my hand, but she would not soar. Time and again I would take her hawking, but she never flew higher than the treetops. Robert called her Weakwing. He owned a gyrfalcon named Thunderclap who never missed her strike. One day our great-uncle Ser Harbert told me to try a different bird. I was making a fool of myself with Proudwing, he said, and he was right."
> 
> (NO HE WASN'T STANNIS)

Stannis finds her on the ground in the woods of Storm’s End, by chance, as she doesn’t make a sound. Robert has gone to the Eyrie, _and good riddance to him_ , Stannis had forced himself to think as he had watched his elder brother ride  away from him and Renly. He hadn’t gone to hunt, but rather to think: his brother was lord of Storm’s End, but he had no interest in actually running the castle, and that task, like so many others, fell to Stannis.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flurry of movement, and investigated. She was well disguised against the brambles and autumn leaves, and by his side Kasimira coiled herself backwards, ready to pounce. Stannis held his hand aloft to stop her from attacking, and crept to see the source of the increasingly desperate flutters.

She was helpless – twisted, one wing bent back, but her eyes were terrified and intelligent. “Shh,” Stannis said to her without thinking, “peace bird. I am here to help you now.”

And he did. He took her back to the castle by cradling her in his arms, and suddenly he was glad Robert wasn’t there, as he surely would have laughed at the sight of his stern younger brother coddling the goshawk like it was a newborn babe. Kasimira looked at the animal with veiled concern, swishing her long tail back and forth as she padded by Stannis’ side, but said nothing – she hardly ever did. She and Stannis had an understanding, and rarely – if ever – needed words to communicate.

Weeks passed, and Cressen, who had told Stannis to prepare for the little thing to perish no matter what he did, was amazed by her recovery – one day, she hopped to Stannis’ window and flew. Stannis smiled as she went, but smiled wider when she came back to him. “You want to stay?” he muttered to her, as he had become prone to doing when alone – he couldn’t talk to Cressen, or Penrose, or Renly, and even if Robert had been there he wouldn’t have confided in his brother. He told the bird – who he knew was a dumb animal, truly, but he sometimes swore there was affection and understanding in her black eyes – and she ruffled her feathers as if saying _yes, yes._ Soon she took food from his hand and flew from room to room like she could barely believe she had healed.

He christened her Proudwing, and took her hunting back to those same woods that he found her in not a week later. She flew, steady and reliable. That first time, and second time, and even the third and fourth times, Stannis didn’t notice that she didn’t soar, didn’t fly above the treetops. She was a good bird. She was his.

The fifth time he took her out, Robert was back from the Eyrie for a visit, and he laughed when Proudwing took off. “Proudwing?” he had guffawed, “More like Weakwing. Watch a proper bird fly!” and off his gyrfalcon would shoot, soaring through the treetops and above, weaving and ducking through the crowds. A rock appeared in Stannis’ stomach. That night, he fed Proudwing beef and whispered to her, “Tomorrow, if you soar, I’ll give you prime steak.”

She didn’t soar the next day, or the next. By the end of the visit Robert couldn’t look at Proudwing without sneering, and Stannis’ great-uncle had pulled him aside, advising him to take a different bird. “You’re embarrassing yourself with that animal,” he said sagely, “get a proper hunting hawk.”

Stannis could count the number of times he had cried, truly cried, in his life on one hand. This was one of those times. He had waited until night, and when Proudwing went out for her usual fly around the south tower, and then closed the window, blew out the candle, and waited.

Pecking came first. Then little weak cries. Pecking again. Weeping, if birds could weep. Stannis could, certainly, and in the dark of his room he made himself listen to every small sound. He almost opened the window twice, but stopped himself. _You’re embarrassing yourself,_ his great uncle’s words echoed in his mind and Robert’s laughter came from the walls.

Come morning, when Stannis had barely slept, she wasn’t outside the window. He had opened it wide, almost hoping she’d come back and so he could shrug and say to Robert and Uncle Harbert that he had tried to get rid of her. But she didn’t.

“She was an embarrassment,” he told himself, as he went to get dressed. As he turned, he laid eyes on Kasimira, no longer the sleek black cat she had been the night before.

Proudwing stared back at him, and for the first time Stannis didn’t comprehend the look in his daemon’s eyes: scorn, fear, anger, all directed inward. _Was she the embarrassment,_ she squawked at him haughtily, _or were you?_

**Author's Note:**

> As always, please tell me what you think in reviews :) If you have any requests or suggestions for which character I should do next, and what animal form you think their daemon would take, please let me know!


End file.
